Fundraising concert features Cariboo band Interstellar Jays

With her Wounded Warriors Canada Battlefield Bike Ride only a month away, Lindsay Chung is hoping good music plus good food will equal good fundraising.

Chung is hosting a concert Friday, May 4 at Pen-Y-Bryn Farm to raise money for her 600 km bike ride in the former Yugoslavia.

Local band Interstellar Jays will bring a lively mix of old time, ska and klezmer music to Pen-Y-Bryn Farm’s Bunkhouse and get the crowd smiling and dancing with their bass-driven and fiddle-powered songs. Leila (fiddle), Birch (clarinet/piano/Rhodes), Joel (bass) and Sean (drums) play music they describe as iridescent tunes and psychedelic takes on old tunes.

This concert is the final push for Chung’s bike ride, which raises money for Wounded Warriors Canada to help support a variety of programs for serving Canadian Armed Forces members, veterans and first responders with Operational Stress Injuries such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and their families. This year’s Battlefield Bike Ride takes place June 8-16 and commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Medak Pocket, which, at the time, was the Canadian Army’s most intense combat since the Korean War.

To commemorate this important part of Canadians’ history, Wounded Warriors Canada will bring Canadians back to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The ride will take cyclists to places of significance to Canadian Armed Forces members and their families who served in the Balkan theatre, culminating at the site of the Battle of the Medak Pocket.

Through each leg of the journey, the cyclists will honour the service and sacrifice of those brave Canadians who fought there, the 23 Canadians who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the Balkans and the thousands whose service left them forever changed with the physical and mental scars of the conflict. One of the unique aspects of the Battlefield Bike Ride is that cyclists will have the privilege of riding with veterans who served in these operations.

Cyclists must raise a minimum of $4,000 for Wounded Warriors Canada to participate in the bike ride, on top of paying their travel expenses.

Tickets for the Interstellar Jays concert are available at Circle ’S’ Western Wear, online at penybrynfarm.ca/new-products, by contacting Lindsay Chung at 1-250-510-5508 or at the door.

Pen-Y-Bryn Farm is located at 2911 Kersley Dale Landing Road. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. for this all-ages show, and music starts at 8 p.m.

There will be snacks and home baking by donation, and a cash bar featuring beer by veteran-owned Three Ranges Brewing Co., which has been a big supporter of Chung’s bike ride.

For more information about the fundraising concert, contact Chung at 1-250-510-5508.